Too Cold Two Fast
by moonshadow2012
Summary: He was used to a Vulcan's blistering heat, but Starfleet seemed to require him to become used to being cold. Meanwhile, "Selek" contemplates the impatience of the universe.


**GOD bless you! R&R and enjoy!**

**Too Cold**

Cold.

It was all he could feel since Vulcan had been destroyed. Growing up on the hottest planet in the Federation with only half the natural fortitude for the climate had seemed unbearable. But now…without the unbearable heat of home, everything felt frigidly cold.

He had noticed it when he first arrived at Starfleet Academy. Stepping off the Vulcan transport ship, he had done a very un-Vulcan-like double-take at the temperature. He had adjusted – 'slowly but surely' as his human mother would say – to the cold. It wasn't easy – what was comfortable for humans was still far below what was comfortable for him although it may have been warmer than the attitudes of the other Starfleet cadets.

He could've heard the whispers even without his superior Vulcan abilities.

He had tried to keep his quarters at a more Vulcan temperature when he'd been assigned to a starship. It was easier than changing the environmental controls every time his roommate left, as he had done at the Academy. But he was still the only one within a few star systems with Vulcan blood in his veins, and people were curious. Officers were curious. And he came to realize that the cold was preferable to the looks in his superiors' faces that made him certain he was forever becoming more foreign to them.

As a commander at the Academy, his quarters were kept at a setting above comfortable for humans but below comfortable for him. It wasn't a 'happy medium' but it was more tolerable to both parties. Not that he needed have bothered. None of the others at the Academy found it was in their interest to pay the strange Vulcan outcast a visit. None but Pike.

Captain Pike stopped in unannounced one night when he had been preparing dinner. (Vulcans did not have the same eating habits as the rest of the humans and most of the other aliens at the Academy. He always prepared his own food. It was easier than having to explain why he wanted something different than what they were serving everyone else and avoided the look of distain for the 'aristocratic' Vulcan. It also built the wall between him and the others even higher.)

"Nice place." Pike had said.

Slightly surprised but unwilling and unable to break with tradition to acknowledge it, he had turned from his cooking and raised an eyebrow minutely. "I apologize. I was not expecting you, sir." He had replied. In truth, he had never expected to see his former captain again. Pike had been like a friend to him while they had worked together. It was more than he could have asked of anyone.

Pike had not responded right away, moving into the room with his hands behind his back, head turning as if he was contemplating something that did not seem quite right to him. The miniature fire had crackled as the only sound in the room as the half-Vulcan had waited tensely for the reasons behind both the visit and the inspection.

_Pike stopped in front of the environmental controls._

_If the he had been human, the Vulcan would've let out an exasperated groan. It had been far too long ago that he had been able to exist easily in the same room as another being. Far too long. He was beginning to believe that perhaps he had been mistaken when he chose Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy. He wondered if they would ever accept him back…then he remembered the way they had insulted his mother and banished the thought from his mind. He would be better off trying to find the exiled half-brother he hadn't seen since they were both children._

"_I've been to Vulcan," Pike informed him. Unsure of where this was going, he moved his hand in a sweeping motion, hoping that he had remembered correctly the human gesture for a person to continue. Pike was the one who raised his eyebrow this time. Pointing to the environmental controls, he added, "Are your quarters always this temperature?"_

"_Yes, sir," He answered._

_Pike laughed, shaking his head. "A Vulcan living at this temperature is like asking a human to live in a blizzard without a parka." He moved closer as his 'host' observed him warily. This human was unlike any other he had met so far. "Why would you put yourself through this?"_

"_I _am_ only half-Vulcan, sir." The food was removed from the fire, but chocolate eyes never left the strange captain. He had never visited him before, when they were on the same ship, why would he do it now?_

"_That's not what I asked, commander." Pike spoke in a softer tone that threw the Vulcan off-guard. After so long around people trying to freeze him out, he had forgotten what it sounded like when someone actually cared about the opinion given – too many times had he seen that hostile antagonism in the face opposite him. For the first time since his decision to go to Starfleet, he dropped his eyes in deference._

"_I do not wish to make other beings uncomfortable." He responded in an equally softer tone._

_The admonishments of his father rose unbidden, and he was convinced he was deserving._

_Even to his own ears he sounded vulnerable._

"_You don't get many visitors." Pike said. "Who is there to feel uncomfortable?"_

_He didn't have an answer to that. He never did, not even when he himself asked it. He had surmised once, in the dead of night when the laughter in the corridors seemed just a little louder than all the times before, that it was because he still hoped someday someone would._

_It was as if Pike could read his mind._

"_I think that maybe you need someone to stop by once in a while to appreciate your hard work." Pike said._

_He didn't need to explain. The half-Vulcan knew. And judging by the way the room suddenly felt a little warmer to him, he hypothesized that the human half of him that had previously been drowning in loneliness knew the explanation as well._

It was even colder on the _Enterprise._ He didn't really mind. The reason it was colder was because there were so many humans in his quarters so often. It was different than at the Academy when the then-Captain now-Admiral Pike would drop in unannounced once or twice a month. Nyota was there nearly every day, not to mention James T. Kirk who would drop in whenever he was around just to ask if he could please be called 'Jim' instead of 'Captain' and Doctor McCoy who liked to complain about having to learn how to treat an alien with _green_ blood with hardly any references in Starfleet medical records to speak of.

Life was colder, but more bearable. He didn't even mind that he had to wear insulated uniforms to bed.

But Vulcan had died – yes, it _died_. The planet had almost been a life form itself. When he had been younger he had laid on the ground after a hard day of not belonging in the universe and felt the planet breathe underneath him, lulling him into a sense of comfort and security that did not exist anywhere else in his life besides his mother. When he was seven, his pet I'chaya had been buried – becoming part of the planet in the young half-Vulcan's mind. Sometimes, it had seemed the planet was the only thing calling itself by the name of Vulcan that truly accepted him.

Vulcan died. They would find no other planet that even came close. Even New Vulcan wasn't good enough.

"_It's not the same." He had said to his older counterpart._

"_I know." Spock Prime, as Captain Jim called him, or Selek, as he called himself, replied._

_It took everything Spock had not to scream that "Selek" was wrong. That no, he didn't understand._

_It wasn't _his _Vulcan that had been killed before his eyes._

_It wasn't _his_ mother._

_He didn't know where to go where he would be warm again._

The volcano was going to erupt. He would be killed in the resulting explosion. His suit would burst, and he would burn alive. The pressure of the explosion would most likely guarantee it would be quick. As soon as the time ran out…it would be over. He watched the timer count down and chose not to feel. He chose to bottle up his emotion and bury it deep inside like he had been taught, not even letting himself dwell on it as Nyota – _his_ Nyota's voice came through his speakers. The only emotion he allowed himself to feel was gratitude, much like when he had rejected a spot at the Vulcan Science Academy.

When time ran out, Spock would finally be warm again.

**Too Fast**

Many Vulcans possessed eidetic memories. Selek was not an exception. He remembered everything. He remembered all his friends, all their adventures. He remembered getting together and reminiscing about the old days…he remembered all their funerals. And seeing them again now, even as different versions of themselves, was both beautiful and heartbreaking. He found satisfaction in seeing them grow – slowly – into the people he had known, the great men and women he had seen them become in his own timeline, and now again in a timeline he had helped create.

Reading the reports, he noticed some points of interest that were happening out of order. He noticed some things being discovered that had remained unknown for the better part of his Starfleet career. He realized with slight apprehension that there were some things the _Enterprise _had come across that he didn't remember. That had never happened. But what drew his attention more than anything else was the universe seemingly pulling the _Enterprise _through its voyages and adventures like a play thing. It reminded Selek of a defenseless insect caught in water circling the drain.

It was going faster and faster, soon too fast for it to survive.

There were some things that Selek knew the crew needed to know about each other and about themselves to survive threats. There were some times when the only way of getting out of a "scrape", as his human friends had sometimes called them, was to rely on each other in ways that only people who had been working together for years, who had a unique understanding of each other, could do. The universe was pulling them too fast.

"Hello, Mr. Spock."

"Hello, Mr. Spock."

He knew something like this would happen someday. It was inevitable that there would be a threat that his younger self would feel was great enough to break the, as the young Jim called it, "no-talking rule" Selek had set up concerning events and situations – he knew he could not interfere, and he knew they knew, but there were times when people were forced to consider "cheating" as a viable option.

"Have you heard of a man named Khan?"

_Khan._ Selek felt the phantom burn of radiation poisoning on his skin, the feeling of helplessness crawling inside his chest. The knowledge that he was going to die, so far from Vulcan, so far from his mother and father…and yet so close to who he considered his family. They were the ones he had died for. And he would do it all again. _How ironic,_ he thought. For all he knew, he was about to do it all again.

The younger Jim. Where was he?

It was all moving too fast.

They weren't supposed to meet Khan yet. That happened _after_ their five-year voyage. It happened when they had moved on. They had been old by human standards…these versions were practically children. Would they be able to overcome? Selek was forced to consider what a universe where Khan was a constant threat would look like. If this _Enterprise_ wasn't able to stop him…

"At great cost."

Selek felt his human heart breaking with the depths of Vulcan emotion for the people who were about to lose a friend. It was all just too fast.


End file.
